Last week, Pearce sent a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan asking that Congress move quickly to provide long-term protections for those brought into the country illegally as children.

“DACA recipients know no home other than the United States,” Pearce wrote. “While finding a solution to the DACA program may only be one piece to overall immigration reform, it is a necessary step that must be taken by Congress. It is time to end political grandstanding and do our job. I again urge action on a permanent solution to the DACA program so this problem will not continue for future generations.”

Perfect. Not a word there I would change if given the opportunity.

I would note for the record, however, that when Pearce complains that “no longer can our nation kick the can down the road,” he has been one of those in Congress putting foot to can for years.

Congress first took up the issue of offering protections for those who would later be known as “dreamers” in 2001 when Rep. Luis Gutierrez introduced the “Immigrant Children’s Educational Advancement and Dropout Prevention Act.” Pearce wasn’t in Congress for that bill, but he has been there for the many efforts to follow. The Dream Act in its current form has been under consideration since 2007. Pearce has never supported those bills.

In October of last year, during a debate co-sponsored by the Sun-News and KRWG, Pearce suggested that it should be up to the Dreamers themselves to come up with a solution that is both permanent and perfect.

“I’ve met with the Dreamers here in Cruces,” he said. “We talk. I tell them, look, I don’t mind solving the problem, but what in policy you have to do is get to where you don’t have to solve it every second or third year. In other words, you’ve got to fix the problem, not just solve it currently.

“I’ve told them, ‘please bring me back your ideas of how we can fix that permanently, and we’ll take a look at it, and if it’s valid, we’ll push it forward.’

“But deeply problematic is the idea that simply saying we’re going to fix it now and then we’re going to fix it again later runs the possibility that that’s the de facto way that you get into the country.

“Anything you do has to be replicated in the future. That’s the difficulty. So, I’m not sure at this point what we would do. It needs solution, but to simply say that if you’re brought here and you stay here that’s going to be OK eventually, that’s pretty loose as an immigration policy.”

So, in less than a year Pearce has gone from not knowing what he would do, absent the perfect solution presented to him by the Dreamers themselves, to now writing to the speaker demanding action.

“With only six months to act, Congress must work together in a bipartisan manner to craft legislation that is fair and just to DACA recipients,” Pearce wrote in his letter to Ryan.

Evolution, indeed.

A cynic might suggest that the hard-line positions Pearce embraced as a member of the House Freedom Caucus simply won’t fly now that he is a candidate for governor, and that this will be the first of many evolutionary moments to come in the months ahead.

Whatever. If I were one of the 7,000 Dreamers in New Mexico, I’d be looking for all of the friends in Congress I could find right now, regardless of their motivation. Welcome aboard Rep. Pearce.

Walter Rubel is editorial page editor of the Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com or follow @WalterRubel on Twitter.